One example you'll probably be familiar with as a designer: Figma often says "this file has unsaved changes", which is because Figma thinks it does not have a connection to the internet. Even though it does. I can't find a way to force Figma to check.

But sometimes I lose internet connection and the software doesn't realise. Or the software thinks it's offline even if it's not. It's frustrating if there's no way for me to manually tell the software to check and update.

One action that was removed, or de-emphasised, in many modern interfaces is the "please try to connect to the internet and get any new data" action. I assume this was because many interfaces are now created around the assumption that you're always online.

In the latest episode of Complementary, @KatieLangerman and I used some old versions of the Mac operating system and compared notes. Interesting to see all the ways it’s changed over the decades.

On the “unpack” point: do people not know what they want in software? Does opinionated software do better than other software? I don’t know if either of those is true.

I’d need to unpack this a lot to know if I agree with it, but I assume opinionated software:.1) Is higher quality because the people who make it care about software more.2) Stands out against competitors because it does things differently.

And I don’t think “privacy” is a valid response. If I explicitly ask it to search through my messages I clearly don’t care about privacy. “They can’t actually access your messages because of encryption” is valid.

Meta adds AI to WhatsApp, but just like X ignores the biggest advantage they have, which is access to your content. AI powered search through my message history is useful to me, but it can’t do it.

What's the best option?.Thanks in advance for all the "use a different layout" responses.

When you've got two fields top to bottom, and the labels aren't the same width, what's best?.1) Don't align the fields.2) Align fields, left align shorter label.3) Align fields, right align shorter label.4) Align fields, centre shorter label.Poll in next post.

Was looking at FileMaker on the first macOS. This scrolling element feels like a big waste of space for such a small screen. Also interesting that the pages face away from the centre of the screen. I think I'd have expected them to be turned "inwards".

They removed the tiny hands from the @FolkHQ website. I posted about this back in March. Clearly I have a lot of influence in the website design world, and I need to wield this power responsibly.

To be fair there’s probably a percentage of visitors to the site that are impressed enough by the presentation that they’re convinced to convert, regardless of the content. I don’t know what that percentage is, and I assume you cannot build a business on it.

My impression is that the only people who like websites with heavy scroll-driven interactions are people who are more interested in the presentation than the content. This includes the designer, the client, and the design community.

I don’t want “play next” I want “shuffle my songs but put this at the start”. Instead I have to start shuffle mode, hit “play next” on the song I want to listen to first, then skip the current song. Maybe I’m the only one?

4) If an element contains many elements inside it (e.g. a table row with cells and actions), more space per row gives you more room to fit those elements in. 5) Our eyes don't enjoy when things feel "crowded" (this is probably what people mean when they say "room to breathe").

Other reasons for lower information density you can give instead:.1) Less stuff means it's quicker to find a thing with your eyes. 2) Lower information density feels more luxurious. 3) We appreciate resting points for our eyes if we're looking through a lot of information.

I assume there are good reasons to lower information density. "Give it room to breathe" doesn't mean anything to me, so I don't think that's a good reason. I say this as someone who has used "room to breathe" before.

I think "give it room to breathe" is one of the most common and least meaningful reasons designers give when they lower the information density of an interface. e.g. "We increased the padding on each list item to give the content room to breathe".

In an age of "we can't hear you" in video calls, it's strange that Apple hides input devices in this menu until you use a secret shortcut that it never tells you about (hold Option and press the icon). Maybe Apple assumes that your input choice is tied to your output choice.